I’ll be going Galt for a few days shortly, but I wanted to do another post about the New York snow thing, because I think it may help derail the Bloomberg-for-president nonsense.

A few points:

(1) It dumbs this down to say “and Chris Cristie too”. Maybe Christie should have delayed his vacation for cosmetic reasons, but I haven’t seen any serious criticism of how his office performed in his absence.

(2) It sounds like the main problem in New York was simply a slow response. And it does make you wonder if deputy mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s absence (he was in Washington at the time) was part of the problem. I know I just said it was fine that Christie was out of town in New Jersey, but nothing went wrong in the state of New Jersey’s response, so it’s not a good comparison.

(3) I like that the Republican response to problems in New York is to pay private contractors more:

Unlike years ago, Mr. Doherty said, the private workers just do not seem “interested in the work anymore.”

“Are we paying enough?” he said. “It may be the reason.”

In fact, it seems that some of the more proven contractors had been signed up by the local airports before the city made its appeal.

Heh.

Update. And one other thing: all you Lake Wobegon motherfuckers who say New Yorkers should just stoically accept this, that’s just not how things work anywhere in the northeast. We’re not all Scandinavians and Germans here.

Update. Looks like another bad day for the servers here. I recommend turning off java script and autoloading of images if you want to read the blog today.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Doug!https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgDoug!2010-12-30 10:28:272010-12-30 10:46:54More on Bloomberg's Katrina (for the differently humored: this title is snark/hyperbole)

I don’t live in New York, so I can’t really speak to the details, but reading the NY Times article, it sounds like there wasn’t a lot of time to make the decision. The blizzard warning came about 24 hours before the heavy snow. If a snow emergency had been declared right then, immediately, then the response would have been better. Part of a snow emergency declaration requires cars to move from major thoroughfares.

But take into account that the blizzard warning came on Christmas Day, of all days. So if you declare a snow emergency and you only get a few inches, then you’ve just pissed everybody off and are “the Grinch who stole Christmas.” And also made it likely that the next snow emergency is taken less seriously.

There is a real cost to a declaration that doesn’t pan out, and I’m sure that that was taken into account.

That’s not to say that the right decision was made. But to be effective, the decision would have had to come between around 4 pm and 9 pm Saturday, which is a very narrow window for a large bureaucracy to make the call.

I don’t think the parallel with Katrina works, because the worst-case scenario is so drastically different between the two.

I didn’t realize how bad it was until I spoke to several friends in NYC. As of last night, one friend who lives in Queens still hadn’t seen a single snowplow. She’s worried because she can’t get to her doctor or to work.

Meanwhile, friends in Brooklyn only saw their first snowplows yesterday afternoon and had to go without heat for days. Major thoroughfares, including those with hospitals on them, were only starting to get plowed yesterday too. People have died because of this, including a newborn baby. It’s inexcusable.

You also can’t compare the State of New Jersey’s responsibilities during the storm with New York City’s. Looking at the first night of the storm (Sunday night into Monday morning), there were plenty of reports of drivers stranded on highways in NJ as there were of buses stranded in the city. And the state was not responsible for plowing tertiary roads after the snow stopped.

Not to excuse the Bloomberg administration’s poor response but I think we’re taalking apples and oranges here.

I’m not sure if this counts as “serious criticism” but I would say some in NJ are none too pleased.

“Mr. MULSHINE: Well, I’ll tell you what the big deal is I live in Ocean County. Kim lives in Monmouth. We’re both on the coast where we got the brunt of it. We got about three feet. We’re also the two counties that gave him his biggest margins. We basically elected him, and we got the worst snow removal. The sort of leadership you need you make a call to the town and you say would you plow the road and we’ll give you a little extra money, you know? But as of yesterday, the state highways were still unplowed, and it was impassable in a lot of the state. ”(via)

But take into account that the blizzard warning came on Christmas Day, of all days. So if you declare a snow emergency and you only get a few inches, then you’ve just pissed everybody off and are “the Grinch who stole Christmas.” And also made it likely that the next snow emergency is taken less seriously.

Interestingly enough, this is the type of reasoning made by the “bad guy” in every disaster movie.

It also didn’t help that Bloomberg told people to relax and just enjoy the time off work. Except for most people, if they don’t work, they don’t get paid, so people were desperately trying to get to their jobs and getting stranded.

Thats not what NPR & others are reporting. They are saying that the Eastern part of the state has not gotten good response & there is some hostility about it.

As a Lake Wobegon Motherfucker myself I can say that the response here was horseshit when we got a couple of feet earlier this month. The state, county & city all have cut way back on plowing &, as a result, roads were a mess for days longer than history would have suggested, many streets are still a mess & snow is not being cleaned up downtown or from on ramps. Walking & driving here are still much worse than they should be. Add to that the Minneapolis has spent 130% of their entire snow removal budget for the season.

Of course some people here have complained about the response but so I have not heard anyone suggest it might take more money to have the job done right.

@Bill Section 147:
That would be great, but to be a true public/private enterprise, the government would also have to contract out to a consultant to determine the what the metric actually meant and whether or not the contractor was successful in moving snow. There would have to be a seasonal kick-off meeting with the city employees that handle the contract, the city project manager and deputy project manager, the contractor and their project manger, and the consultant and their project manager. Additionally, administrating projects and contracts like this require a 2.7 multipler to recoup those management costs (plus the costs of office space, utilities, employee benefits, etc.) for each consultant and contracting company involved. A weekly progress meeting is required to ensure that the team has everything in place and the city is getting their value. The six project managers (two for each the city, contractor, and consultant) plus the actual people doing the work for each means qualifications and training in place. Additionally, there is the per mile charge for each vehicle used (including each of contractor’s borough superintendent’s Chevy Tahoe).

I think my company could handle typical snow removal for NYC for approximately $250 million per year.

As a former Rochesterian, I am in awe of the snow removal in NY – as compared to here in Charlotte, NC.

That said – the difference in the NJ and NYC responses can be summed up by who was in charge during the storm – and the perceptions they left.

Despite the fact that the NJ Governor and Lt. Governor were out of town, there was a competent Democrat running things. Although NJ had similar problems to NYC, the man in charge was out front, in the media – leading!

In NYC – the Republican in charge of snow removal was nowhere to be found. And he stayed hidden; so Bloomberg had to stand in the line of fire.

A couple of weeks ago, there was some minor grumbling when the new DPW commissioner didn’t get the salt trucks out fast enough when the forecast turned colder, resulting in some accidents on black ice.

As a result, the city plowed the living crap out of Lowell’s streets during this storm.

As an Indianapolis resident, NYC was lucky Goldsmith was out of town. When I was a mere lad int he 90’s, snowfall was met by agressive plowing. Goldsmith deemed all those workers lazy incompetents and decided to hire private contractors (otherwise known as campaign contributors). Snowfall removal has sucked here ever since.

The snowfall varied greatly in NJ with the shore getting the brunt of the storm. The areas that traditionally get the most snow, did not get much at all. I drove Interstate 80 from the Poconos into Jersey City (on the Hudson River) yesterday. I did not see alot of snow until about 10 miles west of Newark. I just love Cory Booker, he really provided a sharp contrast to Bloomberg.

I don’t live in New York, so I can’t really speak to the details, but reading the NY Times article, it sounds like there wasn’t a lot of time to make the decision. The blizzard warning came about 24 hours before the heavy snow.

Bloomberg’s only defense is that — because the warning came on Christmas Day — there wasn’t as many people around as usual, they were slow to analyze the implications and get off to a quick start, and to apologize.

But he already shut down that option with his initially defensive and arrogant response.

So, now, he’s pretty much got nuthin’. I mean, aside from his billions in the bank.

But take into account that the blizzard warning came on Christmas Day, of all days.

Boxing Day, actually. The day after Christmas. Kind of undermines the excuses.

I happened to catch a call in show which explains why NYC wasn’t getting a lot of help. A snow plow operator (from Chicago!) called and said that a few years back he had sent a few of his people over to help out in NYC. They slow paid, months later, and only partially paid (65%) what had been promised and the paperwork load to even get that was pretty unusually heavy. So now he doesn’t bother looking at anything to do with NYC.

So, yeah, paying the contractors more would help but so would paying on time and streamlining the bureaucracy so that lending a hand is an easy process. If you’re going to make working for you hard and payment slow, you’re going to have to pay them more or suffer when nobody else shows up to help when you get an unusually heavy snowfall.

Liberals in government want to tell us what to eat, counsel us about how and when to die, and in general attempt to engineer our lives. But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff such as clearing the streets so that newborns don’t die in bloody apartment-building lobbies. Mayor Bloomberg may be receiving an unfair amount of criticism for his lackluster performance in coping with Mother Nature, given the almost unprecedented nature of the storm, but the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can’t take care of the basic obligations of government.

So, how is it liberal when “PRIVATE CONTRACTORS” (the gop’s go to ppl) won’t show up to do the job. And since when is it “liberal” to lay off sanitation workers? Seems that’s what the GOP does. Lay off the city workers to hire private contractors that don’t show up

And one other thing: all you Lake Wobegon motherfuckers who say New Yorkers should just stoically accept this, that’s just not how things work anywhere in the northeast. We’re not all Scandinavians and Germans here.

I agree with you about downstate but aren’t you upstate, near Rochester? I went to school for four years at Brockport and I remember the snow squalls. I’m now in MD and they freak out with a few inches of snow.

The definition of “liberal” is anything I don’t like. Therefore any court ruling that I don’t like involved a liberal judge, any law I don’t like is a liberal idea, any government outcome that is not successful is liberal, It takes the worry out of being conservative.

Why shouldn’t you stoically accept this? Look, there is no good way to prepare for unusual storms. Twenty inch snowfalls are not predictable in most parts of the country. A city can buy a bunch of salt, sand, and trucks, hoping the white stuff will fall, but if it doesn’t, then they’ve wasted a bunch of money and conservatives will complain about government waste. But if they buy what is likely to be needed, then if the big one happens, people complain about their roads not being cleared and other such assorted nonsense.

We lived through exactly this same crap here in the Mid-Atlantic in February. I, meanwhile, had a little extra food, enjoyed a few days off from work, played in the snow, went sledding at the Capitol, and took as many pictures as I could. My street wasn’t cleared for over a week, but hey, I live in a walkable city and got to the grocery store without my car when things were running low. Isn’t that one of the supposed benefits of city life?

New Yorkers are being complainy, but people are naturally complainy. Yes, I know that at least one person died during the snowstorm and an ambulance was trapped on their way to the house. I’m honestly not trying to be flippant, but I don’t think there is anyway to really prevent that from happening in at least some occasions. You kind of have to accept that no response will ever be perfect and that you will have to solve some problems on your own.

New Yawkers being New Yawkers, they’re going to blame the head man (“The buck stops here”) whether he is responsible or not.
And some people seem to have their facts out of order. The storm was predicted as a big one, two days ahead of Christmas, and the snow didn’t hit until late Christmas day, plenty of time for city planners to get their shit together.
There’s certainly plenty of reasons why streets couldn’t be plowed Christmas or the day after, but we’re 5 days past now, and there are still streets in the outer boroughs that haven’t been touched.
On a completely different note, I’m on a plane 35,000 feet in the air and enjoying Wifi. This is fabulous!

I read over at the GOS that R. Lee Ermey decided to go after Obama in a speech he gave at a fundraiser for Toys for Tots. It seems that the old jarhead took one too may blows to the noggin as he blames most of the financial mess we are in on Obama. He noted that while the Marines will be around forever, at least this administration will end one day. I bet he just loved the last administration to bits though.

Please. People in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Watertown stoically accept this sort of storm without the whining and moaning that comes out of the big city every time they have to deal with any inconvenience.

I’m from Wisconsin, so I can’t speak to what happen in NYC, but I am also an over the road truck driver.

I started to notice this in IN last year, whereby, certain countys (NW IN) apparently ran out of salt late in the winter season (toll road is good to go however). This year, same thing, but in November. There was a county in Wisconsin that had the same problem with packed ice still on the interstate 5 days after the storm came and went, a few weeks back.

Budget cuts in local governments seem to be having an effect. Also, too, has the price of salt gone up in resent years? And if so, why?

Don’t know how many times this needs to be said, but: By NYC standards, this storm was NOT that unusual. Bloomberg has successfully dealt with two storms that were worse (February 2006 & February 2010), and several that were nearly it’s equal.

This should have been handled with NYC’s typical alacrity and aplomb. It wasn’t, and people want to know why.

People in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Watertown stoically accept this sort of storm without the whining and moaning that comes out of the big city every time they have to deal with any inconvenience.

What parts are Rochester hadn’t been plowed out – not even the main through streets – three days later?

Ah, the classic conservative response: cut budgets to the bone and then use the resulting screw-ups as “proof” that budgets have to be cut even more. After all, if that government agency can’t do the job with half the staff they used to have, cutting the staff even more will motivate them to do better, amirite?

As others have noted, that’s not really true. And I think it depends on where you live. From what I can tell the hardest hit counties were Union, Essex, Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean. I live in Monmouth County (Ocean Grove, home of Scott Rasmussen) so maybe it’s the proximity but it seems to me that there’s not much complaining coming from Union, Essex or Middlesex – Democratic counties – but a lot of bitching coming out of Monmouth and Ocean, long-time GOP counties. Our township (Neptune) apparently had to divert its scarce resources away from local secondary roads and to county highways and roads that fall within our borders. State highways were an issue as well. Kim Guadagno was Monmouth County Sherrif before taking on her current job. I don’t think either had to be in state and I haven’t heard a lot of complaints about Steve Sweeney, the State Senate president who is filling in, but having both the gov and lt gov out of state during this is bad optics. (and given that Guadagno was visiting her sick father, it was Christie who should have stayed behin)

Neptune is a blue town with a Democratic government (council/manager style) but my little area of the township, Ocean Grove, leans to the right – lots of old white people. (although we do have a sizable LGBT population) The complaining here is all about union workers and lazy government employees and leftover messes from the Corzine administration. O yeah, and high property taxes. The small govt folks seem to be shouting the loudest about government not plowing their street ASAP. Ocean Grove is almost completely residential, has no essential services (no hospital, no schools, no grocery stores, no bars – it’s dry, no gas stations, etc) and is basically a beach/summer vacation village. The streets are crazy narrow and most have parking on both sides, making plowing a challenge even under regular circumstances. So it’s understandable we’d be last. My street wasn’t cleared until about 3am this morning – no complaints here…I’m on vacation and can walk to the strip mall just behind our house. But man, people her are pissed…and that’s seems to be the case in most of the neighboring towns as well. Again, Monmouth and Ocean are GOP strongholds in NJ.

Both of my parents hail from Monmouth County, so I have many, many relatives living there (including some who have a “tent” at the pavilion in OG). The relations are all older white conservatives. And they are all moaning just like your neighbors.

@superking: This size storm does happen in NYC every few years. Some one (Bloomberg?) decided not to check the predictions for the few days before. We knew the storm was coming. It was going to depend on if stayed to the north or verred out to sea. There are storehouses all over NYC to keep salt and sand at the ready. We usually begin to buy the stuff and stock it in late spring because you can’t buy the amount NYC buys on two weeks notice.

@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yes, but storms like these just don’t come around all that often in NYC. I mean I asked my Grandmother if she had any memory of a storm this big ever hitting New York. Apparently it was ten months ago, and she had to walk to school uphill both ways…

@Odie Hugh Manatee: In NYC they were down in donations and had multiple pleas in commercials like two days before Christmas. I take it that many of the people who would have contributed toys couldn’t afford to this year.

I live in Union County, where we got 32 inches of snow. The plows started about 2 hours after the storm began, and continued for the next 2 days. I live on a street that is off the main strip in town, and I was amazed at how well the streets were tended to. Off course driving was still treacherous because there is just no where to put all the snow, so the lanes were narrow and snow continues to fall back onto the streets, but there are no major issues like in the counties south of us.

JC and DJ can say all they want that complaining about Christie is silly, but politics is optics. In Republican strongholds, the fact that the hero Christie abandoned them at the one time they think they needed their government is a huge issue. It is greatly compounded by the fact that it is poo-pooed by some because the DEMOCRATIC Acting-Governor ran things so well while the newly-created Lieutenant-Governor was in Mexico shopping for a nanny or something.

It is funny, though, how the usual conservative zealots can simultaneously complain that the government spends too much/government workers are paid too much, yet private contractors should be paid more.

@befuggled: I had the same problem. I caught an Amtrak train from Philly on the 27th. I was thinking “Hey, this isn’t so bad” until into NYC and my train was running local… Meaning I rode all stops from Penn Station to Franklin Avenue in BK. Then, I get out and holy shit. Seriously, if I knew it was like that in Bk I would’ve stayed my ass in Philly. It was a nightmare. There were cars and MTA buses stuck everywhere, major roads off the Parkway weren’t plowed–My street? Plow? Pshhh. Fuhgeddaboutit.

I ended up having to chuck my duffel over a snow drift that was about 4.5ft high and climb over it onto the barely shoveled sidewalk in order to get home, and this is AFTER performing some labyrinth driving kungfu down inconsistently plowed streets to even get to my corner. My street *just* got plowed yesterday. Wednesday. As in, three days after the storm.

I don’t live in New York, so I can’t really speak to the details, but reading the NY Times article, it sounds like there wasn’t a lot of time to make the decision. The blizzard warning came about 24 hours before the heavy snow. If a snow emergency had been declared right then, immediately, then the response would have been better. Part of a snow emergency declaration requires cars to move from major thoroughfares.

By definition the National Weather Service does not issue blizzard *warnings* more than about 24 hours in advance (nor winter storm warnings, and hurricane warnings were only 24 hours in advance until this year (when they extended it out to 36 hours). Implying that because they didn’t issue a blizzard warning sooner misses the point. They’re not allowed to. Even if they know the blizzard is going to hit, it’s a case where there’s always a chance that the models could be ‘out to lunch’.

But what is being missed is that this storm had been known for days ahead of the event. The only question was duration and intensity. So, if you know you’re going to get a snow event 4 days ahead of time, But you’re not sure if it’s going to be 6 inches and windy or 20 inches and blizzardish, however the models indicate the latter, but history indicates the former, Shouldn’t you at least make preparations based on the possibility of a blizzard and hope it’s just a normal winter storm?

Remember, it’s not like the models waffled that much on the track and intensity, there was a brief point where the models had the storm tracking further east and having less impact, but that reversed itself less than 24 hours later and it was becoming obvious that the system was going to have a massive impact well before the ‘official blizzard warning’ hit.

So, Should a Mayor or Governor be held responsible for a lack of preparation? Yes. Should a Mayor or Governor be held responsible if they did prepare, but because of budget cuts didn’t have the people-power to respond to a massive snow event? Nope, unless they’re the people who cut the man power to begin with.

Don’t give anyone a pass because the official blizzard warning was only given 24 hours in advance, They had a lot more advanced warning than that.

But what is being missed is that this storm had been known for days ahead of the event. The only question was duration and intensity. So, if you know you’re going to get a snow event 4 days ahead of time, But you’re not sure if it’s going to be 6 inches and windy or 20 inches and blizzardish, however the models indicate the latter, but history indicates the former, Shouldn’t you at least make preparations based on the possibility of a blizzard and hope it’s just a normal winter storm?

I would, but it’s not an easy decision.

I mean, exactly the same storm was heading to Philadelphia, the mayor postponed the Vikings-Eagles game until Tuesday, and got raked over the coals for that decision for 48 hours straight.

That doesn’t make Bloomberg’s decision right, but it does point up that the decision wasn’t a simple one, and complex decisions are occasionally screwed up.

NYC gets “shut down” by snow every few years. what’s the big fucking deal ?

We really don’t.

And you don’t typically hear us complain about snowstorms either. As noted in multiple places, there hasn’t been this much outcry about the city’s response to a snowstorm since the Lindsey Blizzard of 1969, and Lindsey at least had the excuse of short notice — which was not a factor here.

The big deal is that street blockages led to unnecessary deaths because police and EMTs couldn’t respond to 911 calls. I’ve been through a lot of NYC storms and don’t remember ever seeing so many abandoned cars in the streets.

Twenty inch snowfalls are not predictable in most parts of the country.

Maybe not “predictable” with any degree of accuracy, but they certainly, as the Christmas Blizzard of 2010 was, are forecastable: which is of more relevance to a city’s or county’s plowing plans.

A city can buy a bunch of salt, sand, and trucks, hoping the white stuff will fall,

Not how NYC (or most places, I wouldn’t think) handles snow-removal planning: the “trucks” (and the personnel to drive them) are already there and on hand: the “salt and sand” are pre-purchased and stockpiled – and don’t go bad from one season to the next: a dry winter simply means more salt left over, and less needed next year: the whole point is to have at least enough available to deal with ONE worst-case scenario (like a bad blizzard). And in any case, it’s only December: NYC has only had one snowstorm before this.

but if it doesn’t, then they’ve wasted a bunch of money and conservatives will complain about government waste.

So what? “Conservatives” gripe about “government waste” all the time – except, of course, when government services (like police, fire, snow-removal, etc). affect them. In a climate region like the Northeast, dealing with a heavy snowfall ought to just part of the normal function of civic agencies – and usually is. The “griping” from NYers over the City’s response to the Xmas Blizzard isn’t (as you might have gathered even just reading the comments on BJ) over paying for the snow-removal system (we’ve already paid for it); it’s that the system DIDN’T WORK THIS TIME. And didn’t work, AFAICT, through human errors by City officialdom.

@Maude:
Make your own judgment, but it sounds like the tragedy involved more than just unplowed streets:

The pregnant woman was walking from her home to the nearby hospital in the still-swirling snow when she ducked into the building lobby, unable to make it any farther.

The young woman had not told her family she was pregnant – she didn’t want to disappoint relatives – or that she and her college boyfriend had decided to put the child up for adoption.

An 8:30 a.m. 911 call was made, with the caller saying the birth wasn’t imminent, a Fire Department source told the Daily News. The call received a low priority, and the city unsuccessfully tried twice to contact the caller during the next few hours, the source said. A second, more urgent 911 call at 4:30 p.m. reported the woman was bleeding and the baby was crowning – and the call was upgraded to level two, the source said.

An hour later, the NYPD contacted the FDNY/EMS to report the baby had been delivered but was unconscious. Cops cut the umbilical cord and tried to revive the newborn, police source said.

The call was then upgraded to level one – highest priority – and an FDNY crew arrived in 12 minutes, sources said. EMTs were on the scene at 6 p.m.

@change: Five anonymous sanitation employees reporting an intentional slowdown to a GOP politician as the source for a story in Murdoch’s rag? I’d like to see more evidence before I believe that this was all the fault of some lazy union folks.

Isn’t the bigger story the “austerity” measures that NYC has taken that led to a reduced workforce? I know most Republicans don’t like “independent” Bloomberg’s bans on trans-fat and smoking but I’m sure they like these budget cutting measures. Until their streets are unplowed and then they whine like babies.

Indeed. I had NY1 (the local news channel) on last night and the roundtable panel from both sides of the aisle, city council, community and labour leaders, etc., all agreed that the public sanitation workers were very diligent through this ordeal. They were just behind the 8-ball. There was no evidence of any wildcat strike or intentional slowdown.

I live on the Jersey Shore, one of the hardest hit areas in the storm zone. I was born and raised here and I have to say that this is about the worst storm I can recall in my 40 years on this planet. The Blizzard of ’96 may be it’s equal…or maybe slightly less bad. I think the problem with this storm wasn’t the uncertainty or the volume of snow but the intense winds that didn’t die down for almost 36 hours and the length of the snow – it snowed for almost 24 hours straight. I have to think that these factors made this storm much harder to deal with than other large snowstorms that have hit the area in the last 20-25 years. I know where I live the plows were our early but what they did was basically covered over an hour after they left. And as the storm got worse they were redirected to rescue stranded drivers (who really shouldn’t have been out in the storm – don’t discount the affect these idiots have on a clearing effort) and clear the way for rescue vehicles. By the time they were freed up to do their regular job they were dealing with 6-8 foot drifts, many of which couldn’t be cleared with conventional equipment.

I could sit her and bitch about Christie and his appointed head of the DOT and the Republicans who run my county but I just think this was a unique storm and one that you really can’t plan for…and if you did – purchasing a bunch of front-end loaders you rarely/never use – people would bitch about their tax dollars paying for this wasteful, useless equipment. (and ain’t no way a “private” solution would do better – my town try to get “private” tow-trucks to free up stranded/abandoned vehicles and they declined because they were making more money responding to calls from private citizens)

As a liberal I know that these are the things we need government for. But I also have reasonable expectations about how quickly said government can respond, especially in extraordinary situations. (and especially when they are underfunded) Conservatives think they don’t need government for anything but when stuff like this happens, they expect it to solve their problem – in this case, plow their little side street – as quickly as possible and get all whiny when they have to wait for a solution.

I was wondering why NYC’s storm response was such a mess; it turns out that the city administration basically refused to take the warnings seriously, long after anyone watching the Weather Channel knew that a blizzard was coming.

I really don’t understand the giant amount of pussified whining going on in regards to “The Blizzard of 2010”.

I grew up in Upstate New York in the 60’s–we had snow every winter, and LOTS of it. It was up to the rooftops one year. It was probably cold, inconvenient for my Dad to drive to work in, a pain for my mom who had to keep cleaning up the watery melt mess we tracked in and out all day while we played in it. But dammit, it was WEATHER. What the fuck can anyone do about the WEATHER?

We just accepted it as a natural force, something to be waited out and dealt with when possible. It would pass, and life would go on once it did. Nature does what it does, and pretty much man just has to hunker down and survive, because we are NOT as powerful as the forces at work on our planet.

Why are we still thinking that we can continue to go about our business, as usual, no bumps in the road, regardless of the weather? Do we think we are Gods now, or what?

Most of all, how the hell did we all get so detached from nature–hell, from reality–that we actually think Michael Bloomberg is a frigging force of NATURE?

@change: And I think your definition of “liberal” is exactly the one Alwhite provided earlier in this thread:

The definition of “liberal” is anything I don’t like. Therefore any court ruling that I don’t like involved a liberal judge, any law I don’t like is a liberal idea, any government outcome that is not successful is liberal, It takes the worry out of being conservative.

I do not think Mike Bloomberg is a conservative as it is defined by today’s conservative movement, which means that anybody to the left of Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn is a dirty fucking hippie. But he’s certainly not a liberal.

I really don’t understand the giant amount of pussified whining going on in regards to “The Blizzard of 2010”.

I agree. But around my part of the Garden State the loudest whining is coming from the yeoman farmer, I-can-take-care-of-myself, Galt-worshipping conservative….”Wahhhh! I can’t move my car. Wahhhh!!!!”

I’m in Essex and the plowing is always pretty good. Sometimes a little too good. I live on a main road right off the Parkway and I swear they wait till we get the driveway cleared out before they come through one last time and block us all in again!

Iwas surprised at the pics from Monmouth and Ocean counties-lots of roads and communities till untouched as of today!

Now there seems to be some rumors that it’s been made worse by a deliberate slowdown by sanitation workers as a protest to budget cuts.
Good God, I hope there isn’t a scintilla of truth to that. Can you imagine the hay wingnuts would make of that?

@timb: I’m thinking that Goldsmith has RIFed (and otherwise pissed off) so many Sanitation employees that the union decided quietly to work to rules during this snow storm, following management’s instructions to the letter instead of doing all the extra things that Sanitation workers have always done in the past to clear snow more quickly and efficiently. This way, they may have a chance of getting Goldsmith pushed out to cover Bloomberg’s butt.

Around New York City, the brunt of the storm hit Long Island, with whiteout conditions. Nearly 25 inches was recorded in Upton by Sunday. Nearly 11 inches of snow fell on New York City by Sunday morning, and the storm could be the worst the city has seen since about 26 inches fell on Central Park in February 2006, National Weather Service meteorologist Patrick Maloit said. Pragmatic New York Mayor Bloomberg encouraged residents and holiday visitors to take advantage of school and event cancelations by seeing a Broadway show. The mayor says city retailers weren’t hard hit by the storm Saturday, because the snow held off until late in the day. Even as the storm winded down in the New York area, conditions remained treacherous and drivers were advised to stay off the roads, Maloit said. Delays were expected on bus, subway and train routes.

Feb 13, 2006:

The biggest winter storm in New York City history — destined for lionization as the Blizzard of ’06 — buried the region and much of the Northeast yesterday under blowing, drifting, thigh-high snows that crippled transportation and commerce, knocked out power and disrupted life for millions in 14 states. Plows were out in force, too, and working around the clock. But there was so much snow that only major arteries were expected to be open for the start of the workweek today, and officials forecast sluggish commuting for anyone who failed to take mass transit. Schools will be open in New York City, but not in some other areas.

there was also a big one in 96.

NYC is always getting hit with snow which shuts down the roads and airports – for a while at least. this does not seem like news.

And you don’t typically hear us complain about snowstorms either.

i don’t actually listen. so i suppose you’re right about that.

but look, even in places that get more snow than NYC, a big storm will occasionally overwhelm the city’s capacity. i spent a week trapped in the dorms at RIT one winter break because a storm had knocked out all the power, blocked all the roads and knocked trees down everywhere. and that was in Rochester, which knows about snow.

Now there seems to be some rumors that it’s been made worse by a deliberate slowdown by sanitation workers as a protest to budget cuts.

Same rumor in NYC that the Post is reporting and that Change is pushing here in this thread. It’s the conservative defense to “our over-the-top budget cutting on essential services really screwed the pooch here”. Instead of admiting that yeah, we needed the shit they cut, they’ll just blame those lazy union thugs for not doing their jobs because they can’t get overtime. Round here a lot of those “goverment employees” live in the communities they service. They are busting their arses to get the job done. They just don’t have to the staff or equipment to do it as well as they used to.

You watch – Christie has been governor for a year. The head of the DOT is his appointee who previously worked for GWB. Ocean and Monmouth counties are GOP strongholds and have been for years. Christie and these counties have been cutting the budget left and right. But the clearing problems in these counties will somehow be the fault of government employees, Democrats, Jon Corzine and, somehow, Obama. And throw in lazy blacks, illegal immigrants and teachers for good measure. (Btw, where I live, the large number of hard working, shovel bearing folks who have been freeing up the idiots who were stupid enough to drive in the storm or in its immediate aftermath are likely, in large part, the aforementioned “illegals”.)

Gosh, if that were true you’d think that the GOP would have fielded a candidate in 2009. With the “typical lib” Bloomberg and the “leftist, unhinged” “Democrat Party” splitting the Democratic vote, they could have easily taken back the office of La Guardia and Giuliani, right?

But for some reason the GOP let this plum opportunity pass them by, instead choosing to fully support the campaign of “liberal through and through” Bloomberg. What gives?

@Tom Betz: This way, they may have a chance of getting Goldsmith pushed out to cover Bloomberg’s butt.

Bloomberg hired Goldsmith… The buck still stops at Bloomberg. And reducing your workforce by 400 people in two years means the Sanitation Department didn’t have much leeway. And note: private contractions do not like to work for NYC because the City is slow to pay. It has been this way for a long time and then tries to discount the amount they agreed to. Contractors take the City to court all the time for this.

@Chyron HR: Change actually got pretty close to the truth. Bloomberg is quite liberal on social issues. The reason he ran as a Republican was not so much that the Dem field was too crowded, but more that the Dem machine is too corrupt and didn’t want a non-politician running.

Honestly, if you think this event will have any lasting memory in voter’s minds (for NYC, much less the US as a whole) you’re sadly mistaken. He still looks a million times better than any of the GOP’s candidates, all that remains is what sort of person the Dems would put up against him. Relativity and all that.

I’m in N.West Queens. Plowing on the streets were dismal. Could not get out of town on Monday to get to the City. Buses were stranded, cars blocking roads prohibiting plowing. Now, has anyone thought about how many NY Sanitation workers were on vacation for Christmas? Did the Mayor and his chief of Sanitation even look at this issue when considering to call a snow emergency? And now we’re told that garbage pick up is suspended indefinitely. Right after a major holiday.

The Dec. 2009 event you reference shows Bloomberg inviting out-of-towners to take advantage of the local cancellations and enjoy the presumably functioning city — not a shutdown.

The Feb. 2006 event is, in fact, the largest recorded snowstorm in NYC’s history. And even that only slowed us down for a day or two.

But yes, there are snow events that slow us down once in a while. As long as we see competent efforts to clean up the mess and get things running again, we don’t bitch about it. The current complaints are because of clear incompetence and bungling on the city’s part during this storm, which even Bloomberg admits now, calling the response “inadequate and unacceptable.”

That’s what the big deal is about. Not being overwhelmed by the storm, but by reacting to it incompetently in a type of situation that has repeatedly been handled competently for the past 40 years — including several times by Bloomberg himself. So why did they screw up this time? We, in NYC, want to know.

It’s fine if you don’t care. It’s not your city. But it’s obnoxious to act like New York always gets shut down and New Yorkers whine about everything, when the record shows that we seldom get truly shut down, and that we haven’t bitched like this about inept snow removal since 1969.

I was in NYC for the blizzard of ’66 that got John Lindsey dis-elected the year later. So much for Bloomberg’s presidential aspirations. Ha ha ha. And the sanitation union leader thugs should be charged with intentional manslaughter and go to jail.

@daveinboca: Lindsay won re-election as an independent (actually, he ran on the Liberal Party ticket) after losing the GOP primary to a William F. Buckley sponsored conservative. That conservative candidate came in third with only 22% of the vote. Lindsay got 41% and the Dem got 34%. Did you stick around for the election? Maybe not since you were in the city for the non-existent ’66 blizzard (which hit the Syracuse/Oswego area way upstate – does the mayor of NYC have jurisdiction over those cities?) while Lindsay was criticized for his response to the ’69 blizzard before winning re-election in the ’69 mayoral race.

As for the allegations about “union thugs”, I think maybe we should wait to see more evidence other than five anonymous sources cited by a GOP politician in Murdoch’s tabloid before we start grand jury manslaughter proceedings.

And nobody outside of the Beltway insider Broder/Brooks “centrist” circle ever thought that Bloomberg had any shot of running for president in 2012.

As for the allegations about “union thugs”, I think maybe we should wait to see more evidence other than five anonymous sources cited by a GOP politician in Murdoch’s tabloid before we start grand jury manslaughter proceedings.

Yes, exactly. Seconded.

As I noted elsewhere, it’s pretty hard to blame the sanitation workers for the city’s slowness in declaring a snow emergency since that’s obviously a function of the mayor’s office (i.e., Bloomberg or Goldsmith), and not the Sanitation Dept.